Becca walked home from Randy Lee’s fish market on Bayard Street at five-thirty in the morning, carrying a dead fish wrapped in newspaper. Later that morning, her fingers smattered and sparkling with fish scales in the first light of day, she dotted Fish, Number Fourteen with red snapper scales and cerulean blue oil paint. Her apartment reeked of dead fish and turpentine. Rolling her jeans’ pant legs up and slipping off her sandals, she dirtied her calves with oil paints and fish scales, but like most artists, if she noticed the filth, she didn’t care. She took off the lemon yellow blouse she’d worn out to Blondie’s Bar and Grill the night before and pulled on one of her painting T-shirts.
She didn’t sleep anymore at night. She hardly slept at all. She’d read in The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors that insomnia was a typical side effect for lightning strike victims. How could there be anything typical about being struck by lightning? She soaked a rag with linseed oil and wiped at the canvas’s edge. She thought about Chris, a no-last-namer (she didn’t want to know his last name) she’d met at Blondie’s Bar and Grill last night. She remembered he kept pushing down on the top of her head in his bathroom on Broome Street in Soho, and her knee dug into the edges of the small white tiles until it bled, but she kept going because she wasn’t letting him off that easy. When he took his hands from her head, she grabbed the backs of his knees and he almost fell on top of her. He said, “I want to see you again,” and she said, “I can’t do that.”
They had sat on his bed, and he brushed the underside of her forearm with his fingertips and she felt this warmth, this tingling heat, spread up her spine and through her gut. She pulled her arm away. She had to leave him wanting more. Always leave them wanting more. Always leave when you’re in control.
Now she was out of control, her red hair bristly and curled in the rising humidity and sunlight. The back of her neck and her thighs sweating. Her fingers were Prussian blue and cerulean blue, smelly and sticky with fish and linseed oil. The balls and heels of her bare feet stomped the drops of paint splotching the polished oak floor as she moved from palette to canvas to palette to canvas to oil to rag. Fish, Number Twenty-two. Fish, Number Eighteen.
She dipped her brush in turpentine, which she kept in an old Maxwell House coffee can, and then into the cadmium red. She kept her palette on a cherry table she bought secondhand in the Bowery. The table was the perfect size because she could fit two Maxwell House coffee cans, one filled with turpentine, the other filled with linseed oil, her tubes of paint, her palette, and her graphite pencils, and there was still room for her sketchbook, which she sometimes needed when she was uncertain what to do next, what color to use—or some new idea.
That morning at five a.m., she’d walked from Chris’s to Randy Lee’s fish market in sandals and blue jeans, her mascara smudged black under her green eyes, thinking, It isn’t so bad not to sleep. Thinking, I’ll try and finish number fourteen. Thinking, I need to buy another tube of titanium white. It’s not so bad not to sleep. The sun wasn’t yet up, but the shop keep ers were busy with the rattle and clamor of opening their front gates and shutters and hanging their scales. The street cleaners droned past, churning water that spilled into the gutters. Becca yawned. She didn’t understand Randy Lee and he didn’t understand her. She didn’t speak Chinese and he didn’t speak English. It was always the same. She said, “I want this fish.” She picked the fish for their colors, for their scales, for their eyes and their fins, not for their taste. Sometimes the fish were still barely alive and flopped at her sandaled feet. “Not that fish. No. No. This one.” Becca didn’t want a fish that was alive. She’d have to walk to the river to set it free.
“Tuna? Tuna?” he asked. “Tuna?” and held the fish that was clearly not a tuna in front of her before dropping the barely dead fish onto the scale.
Every fish at Randy Lee’s, from snapper to grouper to dolphin, was a tuna if you didn’t speak Chinese.
As she started painting that morning, she thought about her father and his photographs. She couldn’t believe he was having such success. She wiped her hands on her jeans before wiping the sweat from her nose. “It’s just a hobby,” he’d said on the telephone last month.
“You should be really proud, Dad.”
“It’s just a hobby, Becca. I take pictures. That’s all. Don’t make it a big deal.”
But it was a big deal. Becca envied her father’s success. She thought, I could be happy for him if he appreciated—even a little—what he has. Here she was living this artist’s life, unable to sleep, unable to concentrate, frustrated with her painting workshops, feeling overwhelmed, and her father, the millionaire tobacco chemist, took a few pictures and showed them to a few of the right people.
He doesn’t need the money, she thought, dabbing the canvas with her blue finger. He’s no artist. He doesn’t care. She rattled her brush in the can of turpentine. Yet he’s had a show in Boston and three in North Carolina. Four exhibitions. I should probably try and finish Fish, Number Fourteen or maybe Fish, Number Twenty. It’s your first solo show, she thought. It’s important. Just keep working. May, June, July—the oils never dry. May, June, July—the oils never dry. Roderick Dweizer’s friend Sue of Sue’s Gallery telephoned in May. They met briefly. Sue scheduled Becca’s first solo show. It was unheard of. Becca was excited, but sick. What if she failed? I should think less about things. People. My dad. He sold the Yeatesville picture of me for two hundred and fifty dollars and he wouldn’t buy a fucking watermelon from that woman. My show is going to suck. I’ll be washed up at twenty.
Becca remembered the Yeatesville picture. Her head lit up by the sun, by the lightning—kind of how she was all lit up now. She mixed the Prussian and cerulean blues with the cadmium yellows, stroking the canvas with her sable brush—a beautiful oily green. Remembering patience. She couldn’t rush it.
She remembered Jacob Lawrence telling the rapt audience at the Museum of Modern Art that he painted each of his series, all forty paintings, simultaneously, one color at a time, moving from canvas to canvas.
Becca worked in much the same way. Not because she worked with bright acrylics, not because she worked for uniformity like Lawrence, but because she couldn’t wait for the oils to dry. She couldn’t wait to wash the burnt umbers and Naples yellow onto the gesso. The cobalt blues and cadmium reds mixed with linseed oil onto the Mars black. She couldn’t wait for the layers to dry. She couldn’t wait to finish the ocean struck by lightning and the beach strewn with thousands of fish all waiting for some miracle. For some god to save them. The whole world, every canvas, lit up with blasts of titanium white and ringed hard with graphite, then smudged.
Becca’s calloused thumbs and index fingers dotted the canvases with fish scales and fins. Two months ago, her friend Paulo, a guy she’d met through Jack, had said, “You’re mad with the paint.”
Becca pretended innocence. “Is that a good thing?”
“That is the best thing.”
Today she moved from one canvas to the next, the sun rising higher in the sky, flooding the loft. A light breeze blew through the open windows. Her ware house fan whirred. She sprayed the quickly rotting fish with water to keep the scales bright. The eyes had already begun to sink, cavernous, into the fish’s head. She rattled her brush in the linseed oil can and then it came. The quiet. She was on the beach with the fish in her hands. The rattle of brush in coffee can, the whisper of brush on canvas. The summer blue sky. The sound of the ocean. The sun on her back.
In the Bronx, Mia chain-smoked Marlboro 100s and felt sick to her stomach. Paulo told Mia about this painter with a lot of money who paints little fishes with scales. Real scales. “She is mad with the paint. She paints lightning too. You should see it. You would like it. You would hate her.”
“Why would I hate her?” Mia asked.
“You hate everyone who is pretty and talented. She is both.”
“And she’s rich?”
“We all hate the rich.”
Becca got lost in F
ish, Number Fourteen, painting until she collapsed on the hardwood floor, both hands smeared with fish scales and yellow ochre, her forearms and face smudged with graphite. Despite what Apple Pie thought, Becca was the real thing: an artist. She painted because she liked the buttery texture of the oils between her fingers. Because she liked the smell of turpentine, and the sound the brush made tapping the edge of the coffee can. Because she went somewhere else when she painted and she forgot who she was, sometimes for half an hour, sometimes for hours. Once, for a whole day. Becca painted because she needed to paint. She had to paint. Becca was an artist.
The loft smelled of rotten fish, linseed oil, and turpentine, and as Becca slept into the evening, she felt Chris-with-no-last-name, who could be anybody, kiss her neck. At first she tried to crawl away but then sank into the nuzzling, her head resting on his head. She awoke at six-thirty that evening. Lucy and Jack were knocking on her door, Lucy holding a bottle of champagne. Jack said, “What the fuck, Bec?”
“What the fuck to you.”
“Lucy got a part in the new Mercer film.”
“No shit.” Becca was sleepy and dirty and turned her back on her neighbors standing in the doorway—waiting for their invitation to join her. She said, “I need to clean up. Grab some glasses.” While she showered, Jack and Lucy walked around the big room, looking at the wet canvases perched on easels and secondhand tables. There was paint splattered on the glossy hardwood floors, and when Becca came back into the main room, her white robe tied about her waist, her hair black cherry in the fading light, Jack said, “They’re going to freak when they see the floors.”
“I know it sounds fucked up, but my dad will pay for it. That’s what he does. He pays for things. He pays for love and he pays for art and he pays when his only daughter destroys things. It’s only right I give him something to pay for.” She laughed and took a glass of champagne from Lucy. “That’s so cool about the movie. What kind of role is it?”
“It’s nothing big. I’m in this department store. Okay, but it’s still pretty cool. Really cool. I mean it’s a speaking part and everything. I’m in this department store, and the main character … Okay, get this. Get this! Played by Johnny Depp! He comes in and says, ‘Excuse me, miss,’ or something, and then, ‘Where’s the women’s department?’ and I say, ‘Upstairs,’ and I point and smile and maybe they’re going to let me spray him with some men’s cologne. I don’t know yet, but it’s a speaking role and I got it! I got it!”
Becca’s phone rang. Her father was calling from San Francisco. He said, “I miss you,” and she thought he sounded strange. There was something in his voice that she had never heard before, and it sounded like insecurity. She said, “I miss you too, Dad. Is everything okay?”
Excerpt from
THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS
Look at photographs of lightning. The images are extraordinary. They’re deadly beautiful. I’ve seen pictures of cloud-to-ground lightning, spreading and spiraling over soybean and cotton fields. I’ve seen pictures of one lightning bolt fork into eight directions—like spider’s legs. I think about Zeus and the gods when I see these pictures. I think about this force of nature as something I will always be at odds with, and I will never win. I know that. Neither will you.
[32]
QR66, 1989
Rowan sat on a mahogany bench in the antechamber of a San Francisco courtroom.
Atkins and Thames’s newest vice president, a twenty-something man named Billy Abernathy, patted his thigh. “We’ve been over this. Tell the truth.” Billy Abernathy had been with Rowan for the past three days. Their hotel rooms at the Gypsy Spa connected. For three days, over breakfast, lunch, golf, and in-room massages, Billy advised Rowan to listen to the attorneys, and above all else, tell the truth. “Susan Copper’s lawyers have the documents, so tell the truth.”
Waiting, his palms moist with perspiration, Rowan said, “I don’t see why I have to testify.”
“Look, Rowe. This is all about money. Nobody put a gun to that woman’s head and said she had to smoke two packs a day. Put on a good face in there. Nice suit, by the way.”
Rowan looked at the sleeve of the pinstriped suit that one of the lawyers’ flunkies had picked out for him. “Thanks.” It was a nice suit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn a suit. Maybe that cocktail party last year. No, he’d worn jeans and a sports jacket. Until this trial, he’d almost forgotten that he was associated with Atkins and Thames, except for those checks. The large door swung open. The bailiff, a short Hispanic woman with a scowl, said, “They’re ready for you now.”
“Tell the truth,” Billy Abernathy said. “You’re fine.”
Rowan was sworn in. Sitting in the witness box, he remembered what Billy Abernathy and the attorneys assured him: This is only a pre-trial. Tell the truth. There’s nothing to worry about. We have one hundred and fifty lobbyists in forty-seven states.
Still, thought Rowan, if this “pre-trial” were nothing to worry about, why had he been escorted around San Francisco for three days by Billy Abernathy and an entourage of attorneys?
The plaintiff’s lead attorney, Betty Solznick, a young redheaded woman in a crisp peach suit, approached the witness box. She put her hands on the box and cleared her throat. She looked to the judge, then to the plaintiff, Susan Copper, wheezing away, her face browned and carved with wrinkles. Then she looked at Rowan, her hands still on the witness box. “A few questions for you, Mr. Burke. Please state your occupation.”
“Chemist.”
“Your employer?”
“Atkins and Thames.”
“And what do you do at Atkins and Thames?”
“I’m a chemist.”
“Specifically, what do you do at Atkins and Thames?”
“I develop cigarette additives.”
“Did you develop QR66?”
“Yes.”
“And what’s in QR66 exactly?”
“Hydrochloroloxinate.”
“What does hydrochloroloxinate do?”
“It’s an additive.”
“Yes, we understand. What does your additive do exactly?”
“It enhances the flavor of a cigarette.”
“Is that all that it does, because we’ve already heard testimony from Dr. Daniel Witzel that hydrochloroloxinate, QR66, the additive you developed, triples the addictive effects of nicotine in the bloodstream. Is that a fair statement?”
“I don’t know about triples.”
“What about quadruples?”
“I don’t think that’s been proven.” Why hadn’t his attorney spoken up? Wasn’t Betty Solznick out of order? Rowan pushed his graying hair back. One strand after another drooped its way onto his forehead. The woman at the salon had used too much gel. His head felt greasy. He smoothed his widow’s peak.
“Are you a shareholder?”
“Yes.”
“How much did you receive last quarter in dividend checks, Mr. Burke?”
“Objection.”
Finally, Rowan thought.
One of the Atkins and Thames attorneys, a man Rowan’s age, but with a nasally voice that made him sound like he was whining, rose from his chair. “The witness’s dividend check is irrelevant.”
“Sustained,” said the judge, who appeared to Rowan to be at least eighty years old.
“Is QR66 addictive?”
“Yes.”
“Did your employers, specifically the executive officers at Atkins and Thames, know that QR66 was an addictive additive?”
“Objection, your honor. That’s hearsay. The witness has no way of knowing if the executives at Atkins and Thames were aware of the addictive nature of QR66.”
“I’ll rephrase the question. Were you ever present when your employers, specifically Roger Billingsworth, Franklin Thames, and Max Childress, were discussing the … I guess we should say addictive qualities of QR66, hydrochloroloxinate?”
“Yes.”
Betty Solznick smiled.
The bailiff grabbed his elbow. “Wrong way,” she said, pointing to a side exit where another bailiff held the door open for him.
The subpoenas poured in. There were more trials, not just pre-trials, but grand-jury trials and state trials and then Rowan had to testify before the House Commerce Committee. He was always asked the same questions, and he always answered truthfully. The legal team of Atkins and Thames, thirty-six strong, ever vigilant, telling Rowan to be honest. Tell the truth. They wouldn’t be asking about QR66 if they didn’t already have the proof. Internal documents had been smuggled out of the company. Rowan thought, That fink—whoever took those documents should be shot. Look what they’ve done to me.
From his hotel room in San Francisco, Rowan phoned Becca in New York. It was six West Coast time. Nine o’clock in New York, but his daughter sounded drunk. Music blared. “How’s the apartment?”
“Good,” she said. “How’s Patty?”
“She’s good.” He clicked the TV off and sat up in bed. “I’m just calling to say I miss you.”
“I miss you too, Dad. Is everything okay?”
No, thought Rowan. Nothing’s okay. “Are you having a party?”
“Sort of. My neighbors, Lucy and Jack—I told you about them. Lucy just got a bit part in this movie they’re filming in Murray Hill.”
“Tell her congratulations.” He’d never heard of Lucy or Jack.
“Will do.” Becca relayed, “My dad says congratulations.”
“We’ll see you at Christmas,” he said.
“Will do.”
Eight months later, walking down Sixth Avenue on her way to the train, Becca stared at her father’s picture on the April 15, 1990, front page of the New York Times. The headline read, “Atkins and Thames Contends Chemist Lied.” She turned to page A12. “Franklin Thames, CEO of Atkins and Thames, testified before the House Commerce Committee, ‘Rowan Burke did not make us aware of QR66’s adverse effects. There is no documentation that myself or the Board of Trustees was ever informed of the addictive enhancement QR66 has on nicotine. In fact, documents show that QR66 was an additive meant to improve the cigarette’s flavor. Nothing more. Rowan Burke is a liar.’”
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors Page 24